Spring Break

Spring break was this week. As I am about to go back to Berkeley later today, I don't know what to say about spring break. I fear people asking me "How was your spring break?" I don't want to give such a boring answer, "It was good," or "It was relaxing," but at the same time I don't want to give a full out long answer to bore them to death or anything. I'm sure people who are asking are probably just expecting those kinds of short answers. The truth is, I didn't have just such a good or relaxing spring break. In fact, my spring break was full of adventure, very fun at times, and other times were.....hm.....disappointing.

On Friday night (when spring break started), 12 of the Koinonia sophomore brothers and 3 staff went on a SoCal trip. We drove about 2 hours to San Luis Obispo first and stayed at a hotel there. Then, we decided to go on a night hike nearby, and it was pretty amazing. I love going on night hikes; it's very peaceful and relaxing even though the hike was pretty steep. I love the view once you get to the top and just staring at the stars at the peak of the hike. We did the very exact thing that I love about night hikes! However, as we got to the peak, there wasn't much view to see. It was like a power generator or something at the top, which was somewhat disappointing. But, we did sit down at a nearby grassy area and stared at the sky for a while. After a while, someone decided that we should sing, so we sang Amazing Grace. I have to say, it was a pretty amazing reflecting on God's creations and singing hymns to God at the same time. One more thing I like about hikes is that I get to talk to whoever I want about private matters in a public setting. I like talking to people one on one, but I always lose the opportunity. During a hike, everyone is either paired up or in a group, so it is easy to just talk to someone. I talked to Alex when I was coming down. Even though the hike was not too long, maybe 10-15 minutes, I had a nice conversation with him.

The next morning. We were about to go to Santa Barbara beach to hang out there, but we decided to just stay in SLO at a nearby beach because it was very empty. We didn't want to risk the fact that the beach would be full, and we wouldn't be able to do manly stuff, like playing sports. Well, first, we did a Mark Inductive at the beach, which was pretty nice except the wind. Listening to the waves crashing while reflecting on God's words and discussing with fellow brothers, I had a blessed time. Here are some pictures. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/68938658@N04/sets/72157629335037874/). Afterwards, we just played around at the beach, playing football, volleyball, rugby, and even sumo wrestling. Then, we tried to do a human pyramid with 15 people, but it didn't go too well. Even though I like these types of manly stuff, sometimes I wish I can just sit down and enjoy the beach. I wished we would have done more peaceful stuff, just taking fun pictures or sitting down. Actually, that's one of the reasons why I'm a Beach person rather than a Mountain person. You know those questions, "Would you rather go to a beach or a mountain." I always say beach, but it has to be an empty beach or sort of empty. I want to just sit down and stare in the distance. It is very peaceful. But yea, instead we played a lot of sports, but that was fun too. After a while, we headed down to our final destination, LA korean bbq. We met our peer sisters there at the korean BBQ place, and we ate a lot of food.

Overall, I would say the trip was pretty fun. There weren't any injuries or feelings hurt. Everyone had fun and got sunburnt. And everyone had a nice bonding experience.

On Monday of spring break, I met up with Alex, Gerald, Alec, and Wooky at a Korean BBQ restaurant in Irvine, called Gen. It was Alec's first time eating Korean BBQ, so we had to take him to a nice place. We destroyed that place pretty much. For five of us, we ate 24 plates of different kinds of meat, and 6 bowls of different soup, and 5 bowls of rice, not to mention the different side dishes that we kept ordering. The meat was in good quality, too. I kind of felt bad for the animals that were dying because of it though. The reason is that we ate so many varieties of meat there. Oh, that's one good thing about Gen. It has A LOT of variety that you can choose from, rather than the plain, old, but amazing, brisket and pork belly. We ate like cow tongue, cow belly, small intestines, and more. Afterwards, we went to Guppy House to get a "small" shaved ice. I say, "small," because that thing was HUGE. It's supposed to feed 4-6 people, and yea it did.

So yea, those were the more fun and exciting adventures of spring break. Now to less fun and exciting. I mean it was still fun and exciting, but I don't know. I guess it was tiring too.

Next few days, I decided to help out with my mom at work. My mom works at an Albertsons Sushi corner. It's a small business within Albertsons that we own, and basically, my mom makes different rolls and packages them to sell. I went last time during winter break, and it was pretty tiring. She has to constantly roll, but at the same time, she has to restock for the next day, prepare the crab meat/spicy tuna/raw fish, clean up, and a lot more. It's definitely a two-person job, but I'm not sure how my mom is handling by herself since September. I mean I guess it's do-able with one person, but it would be a lot easier if there were two people. So when we got there, we had to stock the display as fast as we can because a lot of people come around lunch time...to get their lunch...makes sense right? So we got there around 930, and had to prepare a lot of stuff, and then rolled around 40 rolls until 2ish. Then, we had our lunch break and rested for a while until maybe 4. Basically from there, she rolls the ones that are missing from the display, so the customers have a full choice when they come around dinner time. At around 6 or 7, we do a final filling of the display, and then clean up and leave. That's basically the job that she does except I just didn't mention all the preparation that are needed, such as cutting up cucumbers, making wasabi, making crab meat/spicy tuna, making rice, frying dumplings, cutting up raw fish, and a lot more. That has to go on while she is making the rolls and serving the customers. I did a lot of the cleaning and the preparation things while my mom rolled most of it. BUT, I did get to roll a lot :) I think in a day, I got to make around 10 rolls, while my mom made about 60. Each day, we average around 60-70 rolls. I was pretty proud of myself making those California Rolls and topping rolls and more. Even though it was tiring, just thinking about how my mom does this 6 days a week, and by herself, made me work harder and appreciate what she does. So this was a fun adventure, yet tiring. It was interesting going to her work and experiencing her life. I think she is happier though about this work because the hours are more flexible, it's our own business, and it's less tiring than being a waitress. I think she enjoys coming back home early. Also, she has some relationship with her customers too. There are some regulars who come everyday or every other day, and she knows them by name and knows what they want. I thought that was amazing seeing that she doesn't really know English that well. But seeing how she enjoys the work made me happier and seeing how she works hard made me want to work hard at school.

Finally, Friday. I didn't go to my mom's work because she told me to just rest and go to church later. It was a disappointing day. I got to see some of my high school friends. I guess I felt very disconnected from them. Just living as a Christian for a while, I see the sad life they are living, deluded by the world, and just deceiving themselves that they are happy. Maybe they are truly happy. Maybe because I see the other side of the world, I compare the two worlds together and decide which one is better in my preference. I do not know what it is, but I wish they are on the other side. I wonder if they will ever realize the truth in their lives. Also, I went to my youth group's bible study in the evening. Our youth group is falling apart. It kind of made me sad. We don't have a youth pastor anymore, no stable leaders, and not very many committed individuals. Because we don't have a pastor, our English Ministry pastor sort of leads the group, but it's mostly the staff taking care of the growth. 3 out of 4 staff are still in college, and one of them can only come down on the weekends. So it's pretty different from Gracepoint in that....well it's really different. I'm pretty sure it's not too different from when I was there in highschool, but now that I experienced Gracepoint, it kind of makes me sad looking at the youth. I feel like I really want to help in some way, but  at the same time, I don't know how much of a help I can be from far away. But what encourages me is that there are some individuals who are really seeking out the truth, and really wanting to have a relationship with God. Most people, I feel like, come to have fun and the message is just another thing. Christianity is just a Friday/Sunday thing. They really need a stronger foundation and some of the leaders need stronger foundation also. Just imagining, if I went to UCI or UCLA, I probably would have served as a leader. And knowing me back then, there's A LOT of differences between me now and me back then. And thinking about how that me back then could have led those youth students, I wouldn't want that right now. I'm sure the college students/staff need some kind of a growth also, but I mean what can I do. Just one more thing I should pray for.

Through this experience, I realized and became even more grateful of my leaders and never giving up on me even though I was so blinded to my sins. It's so funny looking back and how I thought I didn't need leaders to grow and how I can grow on my own, but leaders are truly important. Spiritual leaders that can guide me and always keep me accountable. Spirituals leaders who set examples and show me how to live a better Christian life.

Ephesians 4:11, "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers."
God didn't just appoint some random people to be teachers and pastors to be there for nothing. They are who I need in order for me to grow. I thank God for all my leaders, carefully placed in different places in my life.

First Post

I guess I haven't posted in a month even though I said I'll try to at least once a week. That failed as school work piled up and procrastination took over me. I would always think, "I can do this later. This is not that important," and a week always ends up passing quickly. Similarly, I've been becoming lazier and lazier about doing homework and going to class. I can feel myself waking up later and later or feeling like I don't want to get out of bed. This is what usually happens every semester around this time, but I was determined to change. Even though I feel like being lazy, I am constantly pushing myself (with the help of others) to not be lazy and get out of this loop. The truth is I don't like to be lazy either. So I am starting this again, so that I can constantly push myself to procrastinate less and be on top of things.

Starting couple weeks ago, I realized that I wasn't very reflective. Well, I knew this from before, and part of the reason why I started this blog was because of that reason. But, starting last week, I felt the need to push myself to be more reflective. As I was in DT groups and sharing about how God spoke to me, there was something not full about my sharing compared to other people who shared after me. In a way, I was a little jealous and envious towards the people who were able to share really well, but most of all, I was frustrated at myself for not being able to reflect. I began to feel more distant from God, and there was this conflict between what I wanted to do and what I was able to do. What I wanted to do was to reflect and dig deeper, but what I was able to do was just reach a dead end while reflecting.

I'm glad that I confronted my leader about this issue. All these times, I knew that I wasn't really reflecting too much, but I think my pride stopped me from approaching him and pretend that I was good. It was hard asking him for help. After service on one sunday, I was going to talk to him, but I became a coward and stopped myself. That would usually be the end of it when I wanted to talk to my leader, but this time it was different. I went back to him and asked for help. He sat me down and asked me a lot of questions about why I couldn't reflect or what I was doing. Most of the answers that I gave were "I don't know." I truly didn't know too much about myself.

He told me that he struggled with the same issue when he was a sophomore, and the thing that helped him reflect was to keep digging deeper and not being satisfied with the answer that I was giving. He walked me through some reflection questions that I can keep asking to myself to go deeper. What I had to do was settle on one topic and keep examining my thoughts and dig deeper by asking different questions. "What motives did I have when I did this?" "What are some specific ways that I am this?" "Why did I want to do this?" Then, he went through an example passage with me and asked me the same exact questions, and I was told to answer. By doing this, I could tell that I was reflecting better.

Honestly, this past few weeks have been hard in two ways. It was hard just reflecting and thinking of those questions constantly and not being satisfied with shallow answers. But it was hard when I DID reflect and revealed some parts of my thoughts. It really hurt my pride because I thought I was a good person, but by reflecting and examining different motives, I am truly evil inside. "For all have sinned and fall short of glory of God" -Romans 3:23. I am indeed a sinner.

Looking back, it wasn't that I didn't know about myself. It was that I didn't WANT to know about myself. I was always afraid of digging deeper and finding out the motives behind the things i did because I knew that I was evil inside. Now, I am not afraid to look inside because it has to be revealed in some way. Through that, though, God works in us to mature us and make us complete. I am happy that I am reflecting more. I still have long ways to go, but now I am not afraid.